The Georgia in the Civil War Message Board

The name of the man at the right is Hubbard Pryor (Record Group
94, Records of the Adjutant General's Office, Letters Received,
CTD, 1864-M-750). In March 1864 he enlisted in the Union army at
Chattanooga, Tennessee as a private. The two photographs, taken
by a photographer accompanying Union troops, show Pryor in his
clothes just before enlistment and in his military uniform immediately
afterward. The two 3 1/2 inch by 2 1/4 inch sepia-colored
photographs are in a file of documents sent by a Colonel in the Union Infantry to
his superiors in the Department of War in Washington. The colonel was
reporting on the recruitment of blacks into the Union army. The
photographs were discovered by a researcher working for a
National Historical Publications and Records Commission-supported
project at the University of Maryland which is producing the acclaimed
editorial work, Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation

Who was this man in the photographs, captured for posterity at
a defining moment in his life? At the National Archives, research
trails are plentiful. In the search for Hubbard Pryor, check the
records of the Adjutant General letters and affidavits, reports
from the field, and compiled military service records; search
pension applications for depositions and other materials which
might have been submitted in behalf of his descendants; and
investigate other records in files of the Department of War. The
materials there will answer some questions, will raise new
questions, and will lead to other research paths.

After leaving Chattanooga with Union troops in March 1864,
Pryor was captured by Confederate soldiers during a skirmish at
Dalton, Georgia on October 13, 1864. As a prisoner he was taken through
Alabama, Mississippi, and further west. At the end of the war,
in May 1865, he was set free near Griffin, Georgia. With no personal
possessions he attempted to walk back home. Fearful of reprisal
from ex-Confederate soldiers, he traveled at night, eventually
reaching a U.S. military post near Rome, Georgia. A soldier
reported that Pryor walked into camp in "a sick, broken down,
naked, and starved condition."

Pryor survived the war. In September 1880 he married a former
slave named Ann Deaves of Polk Country, Georgia. A church elder
named McGee performed the services. Hubbard and Ann Pryor settled
down as farmers and raised four children, three boys and a girl.
The family later left Georgia for Texas. Pryor died on August 16,
1890 in Calvert, Texas.